samba - Dec 2004 - Choosing hardware for a Samba based home media server

I am considering obtaining a PC to host Samba as a home media server.

The server will hold:

 

*  music files (about 6000, mostly mp3)

*  images (about 4000, mostly jpg)

*  the odd video (about 15, mostly music videos)

 

It will be used to stream media to no more than 5 PCs (i.e. one in the
living room to handle 'My Picture' slideshows, and playing music files,
etc). Most of the client machines will have no hard drive and will boot from
a Compact Flash card.

 

My questions are:

 

 1. Is Samba the right choice of software for this type of application?

 

 2. What hardware would I need for this machine? (Obviously, plenty of disk
storage (scsi/raid?), but what about processor and memory?)

 

Thanks...

Matt Roper wrote:
> *  music files (about 6000, mostly mp3)
> *  images (about 4000, mostly jpg)
> *  the odd video (about 15, mostly music videos)
Seems like a pretty light-weight load to me. I dare say a 1GHz CPU and IDE disk
could do that!

XFS filesystem will be a plus for any server, media server included.

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems

Remove the upper case letters NOSPAM to contact me directly.